Sen Sherrod Brown (D-Oh) is surrounded by bridge engineers and union members at the announcement Monday in Cleveland of his $75 billion Bridge Investment Act .

Credit SHERROD BROWN OFFICE

President Donald Trump has repeatedly called for massive infrastructure spending and his message is being echoed by an Ohio Democrat.

WKSU’s Jeff St.Clair reports that U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown says the place to start is America’s bridges.

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Brown on bridges

Brown made the announcement of his $75 billion Bridge Investment Act this week in front of the historic Center Street bridge in the Cleveland Flats.

“We know in Ohio 6,400 bridges need repairs," says Brown. "We know that some of them are borderline dangerous. We know a lot of those bridges are major structures across major waterways in our cities, and a lot of them are rural bridges in small towns that matter for those communities."

Brown would like to see bridge repair as the first step in a broad infrastructure initiative in Congress.

Ohio has 2,000 “structurally deficient” bridges, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.

The agency says $123 billion is need to repair bridges across the nation with $30 billion needed in Ohio alone.

Brown says America would look very different if the $1 trillion in infrastructure spending President Trump is pushing is actually passed.

“We’ll have modern rail, we’ll have better housing, particularly for people that rent; we’ll have better bridges, and highways, and water and sewer systems. All of that is good for economic growth. It’s good for people using infrastructure every day getting to and from work, going to the store, and going to the doctor.”

Brown is worried, however, that the $1.5 trillion tax cut recently passed by GOP lawmakers will make it harder to enact an infrastructure package.

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Fentanyl comes mostly from China and was the cause of more than 2,300 deaths in Ohio in 2016.

Democratic U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown says his bipartisan bill will help authorities stop the synthetic opioid from finding its way across U.S. borders and into other drugs.

The Republican front runner for the U.S. Senate race against incumbent Sherrod Brown is dropping out of the race.

State Treasurer Josh Mandel is dropping out of the U.S. Senate race saying, in a written statement, he’s needed at home because his wife is ill. Mandel was hoping for a second battle with Brown, who beat Mandel by 6 points in 2012.

This is expected to be a record year for road construction, with the Ohio Department of Transportation planning to spend $2.4 billion maintaining and building roads and bridges. But the agency’s director is worried about funding for ODOT down the road.

Big projects are planned on freeways in Cleveland, Columbus and Toledo, and work continues on the largest project ever in southern Ohio, the Portsmouth bypass.

Shortly after President Donald Trump’s election, Ohio’s Democratic U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown said infrastructure repair could be one area where he and the president could work together. WKSU’s M.L. Schultze reports that hope is fading.

President Trump came to Brown’s home state this week to highlight his trillion-dollar infrastructure plan. Two-hundred million dollars for roads, bridges, inland waterways and other projects would come from the federal government. The other 80 percent would come from state and local governments and private industry.